Mirror for Magistrates.

T. Bensley, Printer, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London.

Mirror for Magistrates.

EDITED BY JOSEPH HASLEWOOD.

VOLUME I.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR LACKINGTON, ALLEN, AND CO. FINSBURY SQUARE; AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1815.

Mirror for Magistrates,

IN FIVE PARTS.

VOLUME THE FIRST,

CONTAINING

PART I. BY JOHN HIGGINS.

PART II. BY THOMAS BLENER-HASSET.

COLLATED WITH VARIOUS EDITIONS, AND HISTORICAL NOTES, &c. By JOSEPH HASLEWOOD.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR LACKINGTON, ALLEN, AND CO. FINSBURY SQUARE; AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1815.

[Pg i]

TO

FRANCIS DOUCE, ESQ.

THIS EDITION

OF THE

Mirror for Magistrates:

A

POPULAR PRODUCTION OF THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

WHICH MERITED REVIVAL,

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,

BY HIS OBEDIENT

AND OBLIGED SERVANT,

JOSEPH HASLEWOOD.

INTRODUCTION.

Although the prevailing taste for Bibliography has already drawn forth copious accounts of the various editions of the Mirror for Magistrates, and the industry of preceding Biographers has left little new to say of its authors, yet an entire Reprint of this once celebrated work requires the accompaniment of an Introductory Account of these subjects, even at the hazard of repeating a great deal that has been lately told, unmixed with much that is novel.

The history of the Work divides itself under three several heads; viz. 1. Of its origin. 2. Of the 'primary inventor.’[1] 3. Of the various editions. But before these are separately examined, there may be fitly introduced the following view taken by our admirable historian of English Poetry, of the turbulent period of its first appearance.

“True genius,” Warton says, “unseduced by the cabals, and unalarmed by the dangers of faction, defies or neglects those events, which destroy the peace of mankind, and often exerts its operations amidst the most violent commotions of a state. Without patronage and without readers, I may add without models, the earlier Italian writers, while their country was shook by the intestine tumults of the Guelfes and Guibelines, continued to produce[Pg ii] original compositions both in prose and verse, which yet stand unrivalled. The age of Pericles and of the Peloponnesian war was the same. Careless of those who governed or disturbed the world, and superior to the calamities of a quarrel, in which two mighty leaders contended for the prize of universal dominion, Lucretius wrote his sublime didactic poem On the System of Nature, Virgil his Bucolics, and Cicero his Books of Philosophy. The proscriptions of Augustus did not prevent the progress of the Roman literature. In the turbulent and unpropitious reign of Queen Mary, when controversy was no longer confined to speculation, and a

spiritual warfare polluted every part of England with murthers more atrocious than the slaughter of the most bloody civil contest, a poem was planned, although not fully completed, which illuminates with no common lustre that interval of darkness, which occupies the annals of English poetry from Surrey to Spenser, entitled A Mirrour for Magistrates.”[2]

I. After this general character of the work, the first step in our particular discussion leads us to its origin. This was confessedly Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, an origin which is very striking, and still enhances the high merit so eloquently ascribed to it by Warton, when we recollect that the writer to whom it thus owed its foundation, has been pronounced by a shrewd critic one “who disgraced the name and patronage of his master Chaucer.”[3] But so decisive and intimate was this origin of a work, which had so important an effect on our national poetry, that when first planned, it seems intended to have been embodied in the same volume with the translation by Lydgate.

To prove that this is not a mere point of speculative criticism; but, on the contrary, stands on evidence very different from conjecture, I need only cite the words of William Baldwin himself, the original editor: “Whan the printer (he says) had purposed with himselfe to printe Lidgates booke of the fall of Princes, and had made pryuye thereto many both honourable and worshipfull, he was counsailed by dyuers of them to procure to[Pg iii] haue the storye contynewed from where as Bochas left, vnto this present time, chiefly of such as Fortune had dalyed with here in this ylande: which might be as a myrrour for al men as well nobles as others.”[4] From this suggestion the printer, John Wayland, importuned Baldwin to undertake the task; but he describes himself as declining so weighty an enterprise without assistance. On the other hand Wayland, “earnest and diligent in his affairs,” procured, shortly after, divers learned men to consent to take upon them part of the 'travail;’ and early in the year 1555, the Mirror for Magistrates was partly printed in folio, but the proceeding

hindered by the Lord Chancellor that then was.[5]

In that suppressed edition the interlocutory parts are given in running lines across the page, and the poems in double columns, the type corresponding and the page imposed of the same size as Wayland’s edition of Lydgate’s translation; wherein the roman numericals have an unusual stop at the end of the seventh book with “leaf clxiij,” and the prologue of the eighth book commences with “fol. 1,” which continues to the end at “fol. XXXVII,” as if it was projected to add to the last portion the Mirror for Magistrates, making a second part or volume in continuance of the work which gave it origin.

From the time of first establishing the English press to the reign of Queen Mary, when the folio, or suppressed, edition was printed, our typographical annals do not show any works in equal estimation with the domestic chronicles. The Fruit of Times, or St. Alban’s Chronicle, Polychronicon, and those others compiled by Fabyan, Grafton, Hall, Harding, Lanquet, &c. were in general repute and extensive circulation, and for that reason fixed upon as fit materials for poetry by Baldwin and his coadjutors.

The influence and demand for the chronicles also occasioned the sudden revival, after a lapse of twenty-seven years, of The[Pg iv] boke of Iohan Bochas descryuing the fall of Princes, Princesses, and other Nobles, translated by John Lydgate. That work was first printed by Pynson in 1494, also in 1527,[6] and then remained unnoticed until 1554, when Richard Tottell reprinted it under a new title,[7] with the incidental wood-cuts, and appending thereto the singular dance of Machabree.[8]

In the same or following year after this revival an edition was projected and executed by Wayland:[9]—a convincing evidence,[Pg v] as well of the fashionable cast of reading, as of the rapid demand for that work; otherwise even the rivalry of trade would never have hazarded another edition, so soon after Tottell’s copies had supplied the market.

All the authors who joined in enlarging, or completing the part first published of the Mirrour, have but slightly deviated from Lydgate’s model, which was then secure in public approbation; and they therefore, in some instances, may be suspected to have sacrificed genius and imagination at the shrine of perverted taste, in order to obtain a continuance of the same patronage. The Mirrour for Magistrates was, in fact, a common offspring of that class of historical literature, which then flourished widely.[10] The addition of rhyme was the mere variance of a minor[Pg vi] ornament, rather than a change of its substantial nature;[11] though many inferior productions, which its popularity brought forth, seemed afterwards to give it the appearance of forming a main class of our national poetry.[12]

From those historical stores were taken the principal incidents and characters of the princes and nobles, whose vicious lives and tragical ends made them conspicuous as moral examples; and as fit beacons to check rebellion; a purpose which is ably attempted through the whole work. Indeed, so little did any one of this combination of poets venture fame, that novelty was neither attempted in subject, nor manner of composition. The whole selection of matter was from chronicles in universal circulation; as the seven-line stanza was adopted from their precursor Lydgate; and, upon this last point, there may be added, that it is doubtful if Higgins did[Pg vii] not cancel two or three lives, first published in another measure, for the advantage of substituting others, to accord with the original plan and general taste.[13]

[Pg viii]

II. In the next division of inquiry as to the 'primary inventor’ of the Mirror for Magistrates, the discussion arises from the unfounded[Pg ix] application of that term by Warton to that eminent genius Thomas Sackville, afterwards created Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, and which has been repeated, without examination, by subsequent writers.

[Pg x]

It has been already stated, that the industry of Wayland effected much in obtaining the contributory aid of the popular poets; nor must the labour of Ferrers, who exerted himself in completing the original plan, be left unnoticed; but still the general formation rests principally, if not entirely, with Baldwin. His claim to the air of novelty, so successfully introduced for the purpose of connecting the whole as an unbroken series, by an intermediate and apposite dialogue, has not been disputed, any more than his finally completing the volume with an introductory Epistle and Preface.

The date at which Sackville’s communication was obtained, is decisive against the opinion, that the work found in him “its primary inventor.” If the contributors to the suppressed edition remain, like their articles, unknown and uncertain; the one published in 1559, was a complete volume, and not any communication by Sackville is there inserted. The intervention of the lord Chancellor certainly deferred, but did not destroy the work; and only on the enlargement thereof, by a SECOND PART, in 1563, is his name first mentioned, in the address prefixed to that part by Baldwin, as having “aptly ordered the duke of Buckynghams oracion.” At the distance of a few sheets after this trite notice, appears that beautifully descriptive and highly polished poem called “the Induction,” which served to envelop all the other contributors with the shade of secondary characters.

[Pg xi]

The history of its origin is given, in the intermediate dialogue, thus:

“Then sayd the reader: 'The next here whom I finde miserable are king Edwards two sonnes, cruelly murdered in the Tower of London.’ 'Haue you theyr tragedy?’ 'No surely (q; I) the Lord Vaulx vndertooke to penne it, but what he hath done therein I am not certayne, and therfore I let it passe til I knowe farder. I haue here ye Duke of Buckingham, king Richarde’s chyefe instrument, wrytten by mayster Thomas Sackuille.’ 'Read it we pray you:’ sayd they. 'Wyth a good wyl (q; I) but fyrst you shal heare his preface or Induction.’ 'Hath he made a preface (q; one) what meaneth he thereby, seeing none other hath vsed the like order?’ 'I wyl tell you the cause thereof (q; I) which is thys: After that he vnderstoode that some of the counsayle would not suffer the booke to be printed in suche order as we had agreed and determined, he purposed with himselfe to have gotten at my handes, al the tragedies that were before the duke of Buckinghams, which he would haue preserued in one volume, and from that time backeward euen to the

time of William the Conquerour, he determined to continue and perfect all the story himselfe in such order as Lydgate (folowing Bocchas) had already vsed. And therfore to make a meete induction into the matter, he deuised this poesye; which in my Judgement is so wel penned, that I woulde not haue any verse therof left out of our volume.’—”

Niccols, in the last edition, has ventured, without reason, to sever the Induction from the Legend, before which it was placed, in order to fix it at the head of those collected by Baldwin, although that editor did not suffer the communication of Sackville to alter his original plan. The explanatory Advertisement of Niccols has occasioned the erroneous belief of that author being 'primary inventor’ of the whole work. “Hauing hitherto (he says) continued the storie, gentle Reader, from the first entrance of Brute into this Iland, with the falles of such Princes, as were neuer before this time in one volume comprised, I now proceed with the rest, which take their beginning from the Conquest, whose [pen-men being many and diuers, all diuerslie affected in[Pg xii] the method of this their Mirror, I purpose only to follow the intended scope of that, most honorable personage, who, by how much he did surpasse the rest in the eminence of his noble condition, by so much he hath exceeded them all in the excellencie of his heroicall

stile which with a golden pen he hath limmed out to posteritie in that worthy obiect of his minde, the Tragedie of the Duke of Buckingham, and in his preface then intituled Master Sackuil’s induction. This worthie President of learning, intending to perfect all this storie himselfe from the Conquest, being called to a more serious expence of his time in the great State-affaires of his most royall Ladie, and Soueraigne, left the dispose thereof to M. Baldwine,] M. Ferrers, and others, the composers of these Tragedies, who continuing their methode which was by way of dialogue or interlocution betwixt euery Tragedie, gaue it onely place before the Duke of Buckinghams complaint, which order I since hauing altered, haue placed the Induction in the beginning, with euery Tragedie following according to succession and the iust computation of time, which before was not obserued,” &c.

With a knowlege of the statement made by Baldwin, there is not any thing obscure or easily to be mistook in this Advertisement. Niccols has only repeated the intention of Sackville, and that being prevented by more weighty engagements from executing it, he left the Induction at the disposal of Baldwin, Ferrers, &c. who chose to continue their own plan. Of this plan Niccols altered the order, and placed the Induction at the beginning. However the sense of the prefatory article has been much mistaken; probably from a want of some knowlege of the antecedent authority.

Mrs. Cooper, in the Muses Library, 1738, says of Sackville: “It appears to me, by a preface of Mr. Niccols, that the Original Plan of the Mirror for Magistrates, was principally owing to him.”—Collins, in the English Peerage, having transcribed the passage given above in brackets, is referred to by Lord Orford, in the Royal and Noble Authors, as his authority for asserting, that “the original thought was his Lordship’s.” And might not this concatenation of error extend further by the construction of Lord Orford and have misled Warton? That luminous historian of our[Pg xiii] native poetry, says: “More writers than one were concerned in the execution of this piece: but its PRIMARY INVENTOR, and most distinguished contributor, was Thomas Sackville the first lord Buckhurst, and first earl of Dorset. About the year 1557, he formed the plan of a poem, in which all the illustrious but unfortunate characters of the English history, from the conquest to the end of the fourteenth century, were to pass in review before the poet, who descends like Dante into the

infernal region, and is conducted by Sorrow. Although a descent into hell had been suggested by other poets, the application of such a fiction to the present design, is a conspicuous proof of genius and even of invention. Every personage was to recite his own misfortunes in a separate soliloquy. But Sackville had leisure only to finish a poetical preface called an Induction, and one Legend, which is the life of Henry Stafford duke of Buckingham. Relinquishing therefore the design abruptly, and hastily adapting the close of his Induction to the appearance of Buckingham, the only story he had yet written, and which was to have been the last in his series, he recommended the completion of the whole to Richard Baldwyne and George Ferrers.”—

“Baldwyne and Ferrers,” it is afterwards observed, “perhaps deterred by the greatness of the attempt, did not attend to the series prescribed by Sackville, but inviting some others to their assistance, among which are Churchyard and Phayer, chose such lives from the newly published chronicles of Fabyan and Hall, as seemed to display the most affecting catastrophes, and which very probably were pointed out by Sackville.”—

The observations of Warton were either written at various times, or he depended too implicitly upon loose extracts from authorities no longer possessed, as he refers to one edition when quoting another.[14]

The hypothesis of Sackville being 'primary inventor,’ &c. shows that he relied upon, and at the same time mistook, the[Pg xiv] meaning of Niccols, (whose corrupt text of the Induction he reprinted,) and never discovered that his position was negatived by the interlocutory matter given above from the edition of 1563, when Sackville made his first and only known communication.

While this circumstantial detail disrobes Sackville of his revived honors, there must not be more than a qualified portion of the character of 'primary inventor’ of the Mirrour for Magistrates transferred to Baldwin. He was the common editor and inventor of the intermediate conversations, but the acknowledged design of himself and associates went no further than to raise another story upon the fabric built by Lydgate in the preceding century.[15]

[Pg xvi]

III. The bibliographical division is classed chronologically by the dates of the editions, and not as to the legends. The first or suppressed edition was entituled

A Memorial of suche Princes, as since the tyme of King Richarde the seconde, haue been vnfortunate in the Realme of England. Londini Inædibus Johannis Waylandi. Cum priuilegio per Septennium. Folio.

The above title in the same compartment as was used by Wayland on reprinting Lydgate.[16] At the back of the leaf is a copy of his letters patent, as preserved in the note below,[17] to secure a right in the work as having first printed it.

[Pg xvii]

Baldwin in his Epistle dedicatory, in 1559, says: “The wurke was begun, & part of it printed iiii years agoe, but hyndred by the Lord Chancellor that then was.” This hinderance must have arisen from the rigour of Stephen Gardiner, who died, Chancellor, in Nov. 1555. How far the printing had proceeded is unknown.[18][Pg xviii] Three or perhaps four copies of the title leaf may be traced; and two of those are in the possession of Mr. Heber.[19] There is also a fragment of two duplicate leaves in the British Museum, with running title “vnfortunate English Princes,” containing part of the legend of Owen Glendower, and from which the appropriation is now first made of the signature “T. Ch.” to its more certain owner Sir Thomas Chaloner. It maybe added, that I have reason to believe, a still larger fragment exists in a private library.[20]

From the size and manner of the page of this folio edition being upon the same scale as Wayland’s reprint of The tragedies gathered by Ihon Bochas, as noticed already, it appears upon calculation, that if no more than was printed in 1559 had been given,[21] it would not have exceeded twenty-five or thirty leaves, and which may be assigned as a further reason for believing the original intention was to include both works in one volume.

A Myrroure for Magistrates. Wherein may be seen by example of other, with howe greuous plages vices are punished: and howe frayle and vnstable worldly prosperitie is founde, even of those whom Fortune seemeth most highly to fauour. Fœlix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum. Anno 1559. Londini, In ædibus Thomæ Marshe. 92 leaves.